West Hartford's First-Ever Roundabout Now Complete

Town of West Hartford

WEST HARTFORD, CT — The town's ongoing traffic safety makeover now has a new tool in its arsenal ... a roundabout.

According to the Town of West Hartford Wednesday, work is now completed on West Hartford’s first roundabout, located at the intersection of King Philip Drive and Old Meadow Road.

The job was completed with the recent installation of curbing and striping to form the center circular island.

"Roundabouts are a Federal Highway Administration Proven Safety Countermeasure to decrease fatal and injury crashes by 82 percent," wrote the town.

According to the town, the benefits of this new traffic feature, in which vehicles slow down and navigate a circle at a busy intersection instead of stopping and going at traffic lights, are:

• Reducing speeds in an area that has three schools, which is a key Vision Zero objective. Vision Zero is the town's ongoing pedestrian/traffic safety campaign.

A total of about 1,300 students travel each day to King Philip Middle School (about 800 students), Aiken Elementary School ( about 400 students), and St. Timothy’s Middle School (about 100 students).

•Over a five-year period, from 2020 through 2024, there were eight total crashes, of which four resulted in injuries.

When compared to other four-leg, two-way stop-controlled intersections (a four-leg intersection where the primary road does not stop) across town, this intersection ranks No. 6 for the highest crash rate.

"These types of intersections were identified in the Vision Zero Action Plan as being overrepresented amongst the most severe crashes resulting in fatality and serious injury," wrote the town.

• This location is ideal because it lines up with traffic patterns connecting to and from the traffic signal at North Main Street and Old Meadow Road.

West Hartford Town Engineer Greg Sommer is featured on a roundabout video on the West Hartford Community Interactive YouTube channel at this link: https://youtu.be/HZ8qswGiJWY.